


Storm

by eilonwy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, HP: EWE, Post-Hogwarts, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-12
Updated: 2010-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eilonwy/pseuds/eilonwy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Runner-up, Best Special Challenge Ficlet, Round Seven of the Dramione Awards.  Participants were asked to choose a prompt from a list of quotes whose theme was "Celebrate the little things."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storm

"What a profound significance small things assume when the woman we love conceals them from us."  
\--Marcel Proust

 

 

The downpour was incessant, torrential. It swept over the house in sheets, the wind whipping treetops and driving branches against the windowpanes with hard, cold lashings of rain.

Perfect, Draco thought morosely, as he gazed out the window. The house is about to crash down about my ears any minute, and they’ll find me buried under the rubble. Alone.

Hermione was gone.

The first sign had been a small scrap of parchment she’d hidden in her address book.

 _Fool!_ He cursed himself bitterly. _Too bloody thick to see_.

He’d really believed that it was long over. The divorce had been amicable. Weasley had actually been quite decent, all things considered. In the six years that followed, a child had been born, a beautiful, towheaded boy with his mother’s soft, brown eyes. Now four, Rowan Emrys Malfoy was his parents’ joy and his father’s special delight. Life had been unremarkable yet rich, its fabric woven of quiet, ordinary moments.

Until three months ago. Draco had needed an address for a post he’d written, his owl waiting patiently as he prepared the missive. The information had been in Hermione’s address book, stowed in her purse–a massive satchel full of all manner of odds and ends she’d always insisted were of value, even when they seemed useless.

He’d been flipping through the pages when a fragment of paper had fluttered into his lap. The writing had been smudged and barely legible, though there had been something vaguely familiar about it.

At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it, returning it to its place and locating the page he’d sought. Nothing seemed amiss. Life went on as before… except that Hermione seemed curiously remote at times.

His imagination, surely. Or at least, that’s what he told himself, after the fourth conversation during which her gaze had turned pensive, suddenly, and she’d fallen silent.

“What’s wrong, Hermione?” he’d asked, concern clouding his own eyes. He’d reached out and covered her hand with his own. “What is it, love?”

She’d shaken herself, smiling brightly. “Nothing. Really. I’m fine.” Rising from her seat at the kitchen table, she’d reached out to ruffle his hair playfully. “Time for Rowan’s bath. Want to help?”

Two days later, he’d come home to find the house empty. The note she’d left on the kitchen table, held in place by a dish of colourful stones she’d collected, merely said, “Back soon. Love you. H.” She’d returned a couple of hours later, carrying Rowan in her arms, both of them windblown and rosy-cheeked and all smiles.

“Where were you?” Draco had wanted to know.

“Oh, nowhere special. Just out,” Hermione had answered blithely, setting Rowan in his booster seat and unbuttoning his jacket. “Help me with this, would you? I’m all thumbs today!”

There had been another mysterious absence a week later, and then another and another, all with tossed-off explanations that told him nothing at all.

Today’s disappearance was the sixth. No note from Hermione, but he had found something else: a letter that had come by owl earlier that day, apparently. Hermione had stashed it rather hurriedly, Draco judged, beneath the blotter on her writing desk. A small corner of the parchment stuck out, inviting closer inspection.

The careless scrawl was unmistakable now. It matched both the fragment he’d found weeks earlier and writing on documents pertaining to the divorce. The message was brief: “2 pm, my office. See you then.”

Weasley. She’d been seeing Weasley. He was certain of it now. All those unexplained absences, even with Rowan in tow–she must have brought him along because she’d had no alternative. The thought turned his stomach.

She’d come to regret the divorce; that was it, surely. Weasley had been her first love, and now she’d realised her mistake in ending it with him. Images of them together pressed themselves upon Draco, unbidden and unrelenting.

Distractedly, he raked a hand through his hair, his gaze falling upon a framed photo taken the previous autumn, just after they’d moved into this house they both loved. Standing proudly in front, surrounded by foliage in glorious reds and golds, they held Rowan between them, smiling. The baby had a fistful of his father’s hair, so like his own, and he was laughing delightedly at funny faces Draco was making.

A knife-like pain lanced through him. He would lose his son too. Weasley would be the one raising him, mostly. The double loss would be unendurable.

He must have fallen asleep, his head pillowed in his arms, because it was dark when he awoke to the sound of the lock turning in the front door. A light switched on, flooding the foyer. Draco blinked several times and Hermione came into focus, silhouetted in the doorway.

“Where…?” he began muzzily.

Hermione slipped out of her travelling cloak and sat down by his side. “He’s with my parents tonight.”

“Why?”

“Special occasion.” She gave him a secretive, little smile.

Draco was confused. “What special occasion? I don’t–”

She laughed. “It’s your birthday, silly! Have you forgotten?”

He had. Completely. But questions remained, refusing to be banished by the fact of his birthday. He opened his mouth, but Hermione pressed on.

“I’ve something to tell you. See, I’ve been… well… Ron’s been helping me with something.” She took a breath, gathering herself. “You know we’ve been trying for a whole year now.”

Draco nodded, his heart banging in his chest.

“Well, I’ve been seeing a fertility specialist. Ron has connections at St Mungo’s. He got me in even though there’s a really long waiting list. I didn’t want to say anything till I was certain, but…”

She paused again, her smile tender as she placed his hand on her belly. “Happy birthday, darling.”

The earth lurched crazily on its axis and then settled again.

Leaning in to kiss his wife, Draco nearly laughed out loud. _Fool_.

Branches battered the windowpanes. No matter.

The house would stand.

 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my wonderful beta, mister_otter!
> 
>  
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work of fiction is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.


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